I joined the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology as a Lecturer in Political Geography in January 2017, after completing my PhD at the University of British Columbia. I do a mix of political and legal geography but I'm especially interested in interdisciplinary work that engages critically with questions of war, security, international law and the Middle East.
I am currently working on two interdisciplinary projects. The first examines the involvement of military lawyers in aerial targeting operations carried out by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israeli military in Gaza and the West Bank. My first book, The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel and Juridical Warfare is published by Oxford University Press (November 2020). It draws on several years of fieldwork and over 50 interviews with US and Israeli military lawyers. It argues that international law has become part of the very fabric of later modern war and that US and Israeli military lawyers play a surprisingly crucial role in planning and executing a wide range of lethal and non-lethal military operations.
The second research investigates access to treatment for the sick and injured in a region where medical and healthcare infrastructures have been destroyed (often deliberately) by military and paramilitary violence. It focuses on three ongoing conflicts in the Middle East - Gaza, Syria and Iraq - and traces the systems of casualty evacuation and medical care that have emerged within and across borders in the region.